


cold in my shadow

by kingandqueeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:18:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingandqueeninthenorth/pseuds/kingandqueeninthenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes they’re soft and gentle, like they’re worshipping at each other’s altar, and other times it’s nothing but teeth and nails and brutal need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cold in my shadow

She sees Robb walking towards her and she immediately wishes he weren’t. A thousand times Sansa had dreamt of him coming towards her, coming for her, to rescue her from King’s Landing. He never did. She imagined him storming into the Red Keep and rescuing her before he tore the castle apart with his bare hands. She had pictured him swinging Ice down and beheading Joffrey while the queen screamed in horror over and over again. Then she would watch the blonde king’s blood spill down the steps of Baelor’s Sept with satisfaction. Sometimes her dreams were so vivid that she could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth.

The sound of her brother’s footsteps shatters the silence in the godswood. She had been trying to pray, but his presence quickly puts an end to that. Praying has become a foreign thing to her lately.

He approaches slowly, as though she is a frightened animal. “You’ll freeze to death out here. You have to start wearing your furs again,” Robb says, his tone disapproving.

 _I should pray for a way to forgive Robb,_ she thinks.  _I shouldn’t blame him like I do._

“You’re shivering,” he murmurs, his face drawn in concern. He sheds his own fur and kneels beside her, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Could I sit with you?”

The fur is thick and warm, Robb’s body heat lingering on it. It would be pleasant if it weren’t so smothering. “If it please you,” she replies stiffly.

He sits beside her, looking displeased and uncomfortable. She is more courteous to him than she needs to be, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Robb bristles every time she addresses him as  _my lord._

“This isn’t the South, Sansa. You have to wear furs.”

She had been resilient to the cold once. But now she needs cloaks and furs constantly, even when she’s inside the walls of Winterfell. The cold used to be a part of her. She was practically made of ice and snow. But the South had thawed her out until she was nothing but dust and blistering heat, just like the rest of them. “Why should I wear them? You don’t.”

“I’ve been wearing them when I leave the castle. It’s cold outside, even for me.” He puts his hands on her shoulders and tries to rub some warmth into her through the furs. “You’ve become accustomed to warmer weather as well.”

 _Warmer weather._ Robb dances around the topic of her time in King’s Landing with expert skill.

 “You’ll adjust soon. You’re a Stark,” Robb assures her. She wonders if it’s her he’s trying to convince or himself.  

She has spent far too long in King’s Landing and she knows it. It burned through her live a fever, charring her insides to nothing but ash. Lying is alarmingly easy and she is suspicious of everyone and everything. The heat of the capital has festered inside of her like an open wound, visible to everyone who looks at her.

She is a Stark. She wants people to remember her as Eddard Stark’s daughter and not just the cast off of Joffrey Baratheon. The sooner she can freeze the dust and heat from her bones, the better.

“The queen once said there wasn’t much of the north in me to begin with.” Her voice is whisper faint.

Robb stares at her for a long time. “That’s not true, Sansa.”

She says nothing and stares at the giant weirwood tree, wondering where the old gods were when she was a Lannister captive. She blames them almost as much as she blames Robb.

Almost.

—-

Robb has enough ice in him for both of them. He is polite and cool with everyone he encounters; Sansa can see she is not the only one with her walls up. He is just as cold as the steel he wears at his side, except for when he comes to her.

 _Devoted,_ Sansa thinks. Every day, without fail, he comes to her at least once. He tries to make her smile. He tells her stories and he reminisces about better days that seem like they were a thousand years ago. But for the most part, they sit in silence.

He tries so hard. He takes her hands and holds them, he kisses her forehead, and he hugs her when she lets him. But she rarely lets him, and when she does, it’s for his benefit. He seems so desperate for whatever she can give him and she hardly gives him anything at all.

No matter what he does, she can’t let him in. But he comes to her all the same. He is nothing if not devoted.

—-

She barely sleeps. Her nightmares terrorize her just as much as Joffrey did, so she sleeps as little as possible and keeps as busy as she can.

Her maids are building her a fire when Robb comes to her door. “Leave us,” he says as soon as they’ve finished.

She sits on her bed and stares at the hearth. “It’s late, brother.”

He shuts the door and grabs a fur that has been draped over a chair. He sits beside her without invitation, putting the fur around her shoulders. “You’re so pale,” he murmurs.

 _There’s no winter left in me,_ she thinks.  _I am frozen in my own bedchamber._

He cups her cheek with his hand and she feels his warmth spreading through her. She looks away from him, her gaze falling anywhere but on his face. “Sansa…I would give anything to see you happy again. You never smile.”

“Neither do you,” she counters.

“How can I? I wanted nothing more than to have you home, safe. And now you’re here, but you aren’t. You don’t sleep. You don’t laugh. You hardly eat. You barely let me touch you and when I do, you tense as though you wish I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t feel like myself,” she explained weakly.

“I want to fix everything,” he says softly. “Let me help you.”

“You’ve done enough.” Her words have such an edge to them that they could be made of steel.

“I have done nothing. Nothing I could ever do will ever be enough. But let me try to help. Let me try to fix it, Sansa,” he pleads.

“You can’t.” She fights to keep her voice even and fights even harder to keep the tears away. She meets his gaze, her blue eyes full of accusation and anger. “It was all your fault. Everything. You never came. You left me.”

He looks as though he’s been struck. For half a heartbeat, she regrets ever having said it, but her anger returns.

“You left me with the Lannisters.”

“I know,” he says, his voice nothing more than a choked whisper. “I’m your brother. I was supposed to protect you.” He reaches for her and she pulls away, which leaves him looking even more devastated.

It takes her a moment to realize there are tears in his eyes. When she sees them, she can hardly believe it. She hasn’t seen Robb cry since he was a boy. He was always so brave, even when he was little. He’d always rescue her from Theon when they played maidens and monsters, defending her honor with a wooden sword. Robb always came for her.

But when it mattered, he didn’t come. He left her to be beaten and abused for the things he had done. They punished her for his every victory and yet she found herself praying for him to win every battle. She would suffer if it meant victory for her brother, and she would wait patiently for him to rescue her.  

“I waited for you.” Tears well in her eyes despite herself. “But it was the dragon queen that sent me home.”

“I failed you. I’m reminded of that every time I look at you,” he says in a strangled voice. She sees his fists clench and for just a moment, it frightens her. “The people of the North used to think me some great hero. Some still do. They called me the Young Wolf, talked of how I was undefeated in battle. I was a king.”

Sansa bites her lip. She has no desire to hear of how brave he had been while he was fighting a war that was a lost cause from the start. He sacrificed everything, sacrificed  _her,_ in hopes of keeping his crown and winning his stupid war while she rotted away in the South.

And only after he lost it all was she able to return home.

“How can I be a hero when I couldn’t save my own sister?”

She can feel her strength leaving her, taking her anger with it. Tentatively, she leans towards him, unsure of what she means to do. Without hesitation, Robb embraces her and chokes out a miserable sob. She puts her hand in his auburn curls and hold his cheek against her. Very carefully, she presses her lips to his cheek in a chaste kiss.

His face is wet from the tears and his voice is thick and raspy. “I love you, Sansa.”

She knows.

—-

“You used to like flowers,” he explains when he hands her a small white flower by the stem. “I saw it in the glass garden and I thought of you.”

She frowns at it, more in confusion that anything else, and he seems to regret giving it to her. She is no longer the little girl who left Winterfell. She came back a woman, world weary and tired. So much has changed and she wonders if Robb has realized it.

She puts the blossom to her nose and the sweet fragrance fills her. It brings back memories she had thought she’d lost, and she smiles.

Maybe not everything has changed.

—-

The direwolf lies underneath the table as they break their fast, occasionally looking to Robb for scraps.

“Grey Wind spent the whole night whining and whimpering. I think he worries about you when he spends his nights with me,” Robb says as he tosses his wolf a piece of bread.

It’s easier on Grey Wind when Sansa and Robb are together. When they’re apart, he has to split his time between them, which makes for a lot of running.

“Maybe we should sleep in the same chamber with Grey Wind between us,” she jests.

Robb smiles, but Sansa can see his worry. He is all too aware of the circles beneath her eyes. “Maybe we should. Would it help you sleep if you have Grey Wind with you?” He pauses. “And me?”

“Maybe,” she answers. “There’s no harm in trying.”

—-

They start out sleeping with Grey Wind between them, but after a few nights it’s clear that the wolf is too big. So he sleeps at the foot of the bed, content to be in the room with them.

Robb’s presence in her bed keeps the dreams away, and she’s grateful. Grey Wind makes a soft, low rumbling noise in his chest when he sleeps sometimes and it becomes a comforting noise.

Grey Wind stays outside of Sansa’s solar one night at Robb’s command. He bars the door and she hears the wolf settle down on the other side, protecting them from anyone who may approach.

Robb climbs into bed beside her and Sansa’s stomach flutters without explanation. They lie next to each other for awhile, as if nothing is amiss. He takes her hand and rubs his thumb over her knuckles in a comforting  gesture. It seems as though they are nothing more than a brother and a sister, but it feels like a pretense.

It happens so naturally that she barely notices his lips on hers. A small voice in the back of her head whispers,  _Lannisters,_ but she kisses him back all the same. His lips trail from her neck to the hollow at base of her throat, and then ghost over her collar bone like a threat and a promise that he will continue lower.

His fingers fumble as he tries to get her out of her nightgown. It almost seems as though he’s shaking, and maybe he is, though Sansa can’t imagine why. Robb has always been handsome, with his curly auburn hair and bright blue eyes. Sansa’s friend Jeyne used to think he was handsome and the serving girls always giggled when he passed by. Robb had been with girls before, she was certain.

He pulls the gown over her head and then sheds his own clothes, tossing them carelessly to the floor. Their eyes lock, Robb hesitates, and Sansa wonders if he’s starting to realize just exactly what’s happening. She takes his hand and puts it on her hip before sliding it up her stomach and coaxing him into kneading her breast. After that, he needs no more direction.

His fingers easily find their way between her legs just as he puts the flat of his tongue on the underside of her breast. She can feel the heat of his breath on her skin and it’s enough to make her shudder. He strokes his fingers against her, slow at first, until he hears her breath catch with a little gasp. The movements come faster then, and her breathing becomes ragged. She peaks with a force that leaves her lying limp against Robb, her breathing labored. She wants to fold herself over him, pressed so tightly together that they can never be separated again. They were never meant to be apart to begin with. They’re Starks cut from the same cloth, and she’ll be damned if she parts with him again.

“You blossomed while you were away,” he murmurs, running the tip of his nose along the curve of her neck. “You managed to grow even more beautiful.”

He buries his hands in her hair and presses his lips to the nape of her neck, whispering sweet nothings that make her pliant and soft beneath his hands.

Sansa grips his shoulders with all she has, digging her nails into his skin as he slides into her. He feels like stability and unyielding strength beneath her fingers. She can’t help but think about is how this is what she needed while she was a bird in the cage they call King’s Landing. She learned to be strong herself, but it was Robb she longed for.

There’s desperation in each thrust, and they cling to each other tighter than she thought possible. It occurs to Sansa that his hands may leave marks on her, just small bruises, and it has a strange effect on her. She’s used to bruises by now, used to seeing the result of her torment, but the idea of a bruise with a good memory behind it could almost make her start to forget all the others.

They finish sated and exhausted, but Sansa lies awake next to Robb. Satisfaction and guilt both pool in her stomach. She wonders if this is how Cersei felt lying next to Jaime, and the thought leaves her unsettled.  

—-

She had worried her time in the South had turned her into a Lannister, but her nights with Robb make her feel more like a wolf than she ever has. Each night when he bars the door, she feels desperation surging through her.

Sometimes they’re soft and gentle, like they’re worshipping at each other’s altar, and other times it’s nothing but teeth and nails and brutal need.

But it always ends the same. A strange sensation of love and shame.

—-

The warmth she feels at night always stays with her into the following day, and she goes without her furs like she used to. The frost and cold take to her again and winter settles back into her bones.

Robb tastes like ice and snow, the embodiment of the cold weather she’s so used to. Winter is just as much a part of Sansa as Robb is, and she knows she’ll never separate from either or them again. She belongs in the North, she belongs with Robb. He bleeds into her as they sleep next to each other every night and Sansa feels whole again.

She may not understand what has happened between them, but she does know that they can’t turn back, and for that much she is grateful.

She knows for certain that they’re not Lannisters, either. They’re Starks.

 


End file.
